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U.S. Tracks Saudi Bank
Favored by Extremists

Officials Debated What
To Do About Al Rajhi,
Intelligence Files Show

By

Glenn R. Simpson

Updated July 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia -- In the 1940s, two Bedouin farm boys from the desert began changing money for the trickle of traders and religious pilgrims in this then-remote and barren kingdom. It was a business built on faith and trust, Sulaiman Al Rajhi once told an interviewer, and for many years he would hand gold bars to strangers boarding flights in Jidda and ask them to give the gold to his brother on their arrival in Riyadh.